Build Your Digital Command Canter Part 1

The popularity of Star Trek is based, in part, upon our fascination with advanced technology. We're excited when Captain Picardorders his crew to take The Enterprise to another galaxy with the simple command "Make it so." In the distant future, it seems, we'll be able to entertain our merest whim by pushing a button or by telling a computer what we want done. Powerful machines will do the rest.

To succeed at digital marketing, you need to build your own version of The Starship Enterprise. You need to develop a digital command center in your company to communicate on a day-by-day basis with your customers and prospects. Unlike a traditional marketing department — often far removed from direct contact with customers — a digital marketing department must be hardwired to Customers. E-mail messages, for example, must be read and replied to Within hours, if not minutes, and your Web site content may need to be updated and changed daily. In addition, your customer database should be constantly churning with new information uploaded from your salespeople, your customer service representatives, and your customers.

Integration in the Digital Economy

To gather, store, process, and distribute digital information, you need to integrate your company into the digital economy. In the next three to five years, you will need the following capabilities in your company.

• Every computer is connected over a network using highspeed cable. This network includes an internal e-mail system that allows for the sending and receiving of Internet e-mail messages.
• Everyone involved in your company — employees, customers, and suppliers — are able to communicate by e-mail with everyone else in your company. As bandwidth becomes greater, you can upgrade your e-mail capability to include video-mail and live video-conferencing.
• Employees and contract workers are able to work at home, or at satellite offices, as easily as if they were in the office. Note: In the digital world, you may not have an office; your entire operation may run over a central server that electronically connects your organization.
• Your internal computer network is connected directly to the Internet over high-speed telephone or cable lines. This means every computer on your network is connected to the Internet at all times. In fact, it means your computer network is actually part of the Internet.
• You have security measures in place which restrict access to private corporate information on your network. One solution is to set up an Internet fire wall.
• Your marketing presentations, internal communications, and training courses exist in a multimedia format which combines text, graphics, sound, and video. You have software that allows for the easy development of multimedia content.
• You have one or many different types of online servers running on your network. This includes one or more Web servers, a BBS network server, and online database servers. Each of these servers are available to selected people within your organization over an Intranet, or outside your organization by way of the Internet.
• As an alternative to internal online servers, you can lease space with service bureaus. For example, you can rent space on a Web site that is halfway around the world. You can update its content as if the server was in your office. You may use a service bureau to set up and run your online BBS system. Remember, you don't need to buy expensive digital equipment in order to use it — you can rent it as well.
• Your customers access information about your business using a variety of digital communications tools including the telephone, fax, e-mail, the World Wide Web, interactive kiosks, and CD-ROM, and perhaps also through some sort of virtual reality (VR) device. Ideally, your customers are able to purchase your products and services electronically.
• You have an extensive database on all your customers and prospects. This database is relational in structure. All your digital communications and your digital marketing promotions are aimed at increasing the size, quality, and complexity of this database.
• All your computer systems are compatible. In the computer industry, this is known as "Open Systems Architecture." This means all your corporate information is accessible, no matter what type of computer is used. As well, your information should be accessible through all digital devices, not just computer-related ones.
• Your employees are fully fluent in the ways of basic digital technology. Everyone in your organization knows how to use the three major types of software programs: word processing, spreadsheet, and database. They are comfortable creating _and viewing multimedia content. They understand the basic concepts of the Internet, and can find the information they need on it.

In order to succeed at digital marketing over the long term, you need to set up this type of infrastructure within your company. However, man didn't get to the moon in one day. So take it one step at a time. Here's an explanation of how to take the first steps:

Expressing the Role of the User by Creating an Archetypal Character

Identifying an average user of the Internet, is at best implausible, and, more probably, impossible; but this does not exonerate systems designers from trying. The previous section described how a research method was devised to establish purpose, for the design of a novel IS, but mentioned at the outset how it is the wants or needs of the end-user that must always be the overriding purpose of any such system. Consequently, the method, although sufficient for ensuring compatibility between system and organization, was not enough to guarantee end-user satisfaction. As work began on prototype development, it became apparent that identification of end-users of the system needed further clarification.

Discussion revealed that the organization had very clear perspectives on some members of the public that take an interest in the heritage. They could be described as those that already made use of its services, its current customer base, and a very concrete understanding of their needs and wants already existed. Accordingly, there was a feeling that the customer, or potential user, was already known, and did not therefore need to be discovered, nor included in either development or system-testing. However,because the PastScape project was exploring an untapped area, its resulting application had the potential to reach a whole new customer base, customers whose identities were not yet discovered. Although internal belief and external reality may have been a perfect match, there was no evidence to assert this possibility, and without a concrete external user to target, the system risked only satisfying an internalized viewpoint, without necessarily improving the organization's dissemination of information. Furthermore, there is always a danger, with such an internalised viewpoint, that the wrong emphasis can be placed on decisions; for example, regarding which particular dataset should take advantage of a new, and potentially advantageous, system.

Many organizations are structured in such a way that different sections, divisions or departments have responsibility, and therefore ownership, for different elements of the organization's data. This carries with it the possibility that a dataset will be chosen according to some sort of purely internal motivation, rather than for the benefit of an intended user. In an attempt to resolve this issue satisfactorily, i.e. to promote wider internal acceptance of the principles of user-centred design, two different approaches were established. The first was to compose a "typical" user; the second was to explain the correlation between the potential new system and certain current business practices. These two approaches are outlined here:

The Intelligent 12-year-old

Because the perfect typical, or average, user does not, unfortunately, exist, early usability experiments for this project were conducted with the involvement of a variety of potential user-group representatives. The test- subject volunteer force (some 48 people, half of whom were males, and the other half, females) was composed of equal ratios of: heritage professionals; computer experts; lay people with no expertise in either heritage or computing; and, children aged between 9 and 11 years. However, in everyday discussions with EH staff it was impractical, to say the least, to try and explain that every element of the system was being designed to disseminate information to this convoluted cross section of society. Thus, all four types, and both genders, became assimilated into a single, easily explained, "intelligent 12-year-old". From the moment that this creation took life, explaining or rationalising any element of the system, to almost anyone, took on a new and surprising simplicity and clarity. Most people seemed to naturally understand what was meant by an intelligent 12-year-old, had no problem seeing why such a character had arisen from our collection of test subjects, and, perhaps most interestingly, accepted that such a persona was appropriate, as an "average" user of the Internet with a possible interest in heritage matters.

From Data to Information

The second approach taken, to demonstrate the importance of a target audience, was to clarify the functionality of a usable system by relating it to more easily recognised, non-IS, business functions. It was necessary, at various stages, to attain approval from people within EH who were well acquainted with dealing with the public, and whose natural responses revolved around familiar business processes, usually from a non-IT viewpoint, but often with an informed knowledge of web or IS principles. Drawing on the results of the initial analytical method, and through discussion with internal staff, a picture was revealed of some of the business practices that were already being used to disseminate database information to the public, and to other heritage professionals. The area of the organization's business structure that was most relevant to the project at that time, centred around EH's National Monuments Record Centre (NMRC) where members of the public could request heritage information. An enquiry would elicit a search by a team of in-house professionals, using various national databases and archives, and the results would be supplied to the enquirer. Essential to this process, which is of course an information system, are: the existence of data; an understanding of the data; an interpretion of the user's requirement; and delivery of appropriate information. Appropriate, of course, to the end-user. This, the process of turning data into information, is illustrated in Fig. 8.1. Within the NMRC, the in-house professionals perform this complex task by interpreting what the user wants, being able to understand the terminology and structure of the data, and then by presenting a suitable end-product.

Taking this already-understood process, or service to the use, and equating it to what a good IS should provide, was a useful ally in the explanation of the new interface, especially to those who were regular users of the Internet; many web-sites fail to provide this absolutely essential service, instead simply making raw data available. Such sites are not truly information systems, they are data storage systems with multiple-user access.

The Importance of Recognizing Underlying Perceptions

Every software developer, HCI designer or usability specialist is aware of the importance of making any system appropriate, or fit, for its intended purpose; and that the intended purpose of any system is ultimately that which the end-user wants or needs to do with it. On this basis, and before the PastScape project itself was born, a bespoke requirements-capture method was devised, incorporating several well-known analysis and survey techniques. The aim of this exercise was to try and identify useful and practical mappings between the business needs (problem domain), and the technological hardware, software and processes that were, or soon would be, available to the organization (solution domain). Although there was an expressed intention to develop a novel ICT application, and a desire to make use of VR and Internet technologies, at this early stage no specific thoughts were formulated about what shape any resulting project would take, nor to what end. Instead, the research method was designed to establish whether or not there were any business areas that could, at that time, benefit from the implementation of new ICT systems or approaches.

From the outset the pre-developmental research involved considerable consultation with a wide variety of staff, including senior personnel (directors), IS (Information Systems) staff, as well as specialists and users in other areas of the corporate structure. The input provided by such a variety of people, and their very different perspectives, inevitably proved to be extremely useful, and enabled a comprehensive and realistic overview of the organization to be established. The output included plans, descriptions, flow-diagrams and discussions of all of the organization's major functions; IT capabilities; divisions and departments; external partners; financial restraints; and its corporate and strategic visions for the future. The investigation was helped by the fact that, because this was effectively blue sky research, there were few negative pre-conceptions associated with it, and thus staff involvement in the early stages was fairly spontaneous and enthusiastic. The perceived potential, offered by the very latest innovations in technologies such as the web and VR, was great, and certainly worth a degree of investment in both time and effort.

There was also, however, a flip side to this particular coin. As a consequence of the fact that the project began with a clean sheet, and because the initial analysis focused on an examination of business functions, it was difficult to explain to those involved what it was that was being asked of them; interviewed staff, understandably, wanted an idea of what was to be developed so that they could temper their responses accordingly. Intuitively, they were trying to ensure that their input was itself "fit for purpose". This led to a degree of uncertainty that seemed to be counteracted by "playing safe", i.e. responses tended to be high-level, in accord, particularly, with the deliverables of an organization-wide IS strategy study that had been completed only a matter of months earlier. Whilst this may still have produced a fair overview of the IS elements of the organization, it meant that some "reading between the lines" was necessary to identify areas that could benefit from new technological systems, approaches or ideas; quite reasonably, no one wanted to consider the possibility of areas that "could do better", especially after so much time, money and effort had so recently been put into a substantial IS study. Furthermore, although the staff respondents were enthusiastic and helpful during the analysis process, finding someone to take firm internal ownership of the project, a "champion", proved to be a difficult task. Retrospectively this seems fairly predictable because, during the early stages, no one had the faintest idea what it was they would be championing!

Fortunately, belief in a positive outcome, combined with the continued help and goodwill of staff (including some with enough faith to take at least limited ownership), enabled the process to continue. Ultimately, the research method revealed a commitment to increase the dissemination of heritage information, stored predominantly in computer databases. It also revealed that, due to various constraints, this commitment was not being addressed as quickly as the organization wanted. Combining this factor with the earlier intentions to make use of VR and Internet technologies, it was decided to try to develop a system that would allow users to explore heritage data, via VR models, on the web. The only missing factor seemed to be who exactly these mysterious, obliging, "users" were!